


Power Over Me

by MaryPSue



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Labyrinth Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-24
Updated: 2013-09-23
Packaged: 2017-12-27 12:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/978681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The words have been all but forgotten, but the Nightmare King is still bound by them. If someone wishes for him to take away a child, he must obey. It's woven into the very fabric of his existence.</p><p>But this time, when he arrives for the unlucky brat, he finds not a babe in arms but a boy on the threshold of manhood. A boy who is more than willing to be spirited away...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I just realised that I never posted this here. I thought I might clean it up and expand the trials somewhat for AO3, but as I am a lazy arse and have taken on more projects than I thought I had, that's not going to happen. 
> 
> This was written for tumblr's Quicksand Week.

There’s no child.

It’s the first thing that Pitch Black, King of Nightmares, notices when he finds himself dragged unceremoniously out of his realm (in the middle of a rather good book), and deposited in the middle of the mundane, mortal, boring realm of the Aboveground, by those tedious Words. It has been nearly a full century since the last time he’s had to do this, but he quickly falls back into his old routine. He emerges from the shadows on batwings and lightning, howling in the teeth of terror, and reveals himself in all his immortal grandeur –

And there is no child.

Just a boy, chubby and golden, in his late teens if Pitch had to hazard a guess. Accursed mortals grew too quickly and never looked their proper age. The boy seems frozen to the spot, his pretty eyes wide with something just north of fear and west of awe. Ordinarily Pitch would toy with him, now, play upon his guilt and his fright, attempt to eke a little fun out of this joyless visit, but he is distracted by fearling howls and hisses at the sight of an empty cradle. There is no child.

“You’re him, aren’t you?”

The voice comes from the boy in front of Pitch, melodious and reverent, and Pitch takes a moment to bask in the heady feeling of belief when the boy breathes, “The Nightmare King.” It’s been far too long since that name was last spoken in this realm, and he can feel the shadows shiver with it, the dark forgotten places behind doors and under beds and in minds resonating at the sound. He drinks it in, reveling in the feeling for a long moment before returning to the business at hand.

“Where is the child?”

The boy’s brow furrows. “What child?”

Pitch stops short. Has it really been so long, have they really forgotten so much, that this – this tadpole doesn’t even know what the Words mean? “The child,” he hisses, looming over the boy, who still seems too close to awe to be properly afraid.

Is – is he – smiling?

Pitch, never very patient at the best of times, completely loses his temper at the sight of that wondering, gap-toothed grin. The shadows slinking around the small room leap and howl as he thunders, “The child! That damned snippet of half-forgotten lore is still binding, brat. You wished for the fearlings to come and take a child away. Where. Is. The. Child?”

The boy does not so much as flinch, even when Pitch’s tirade leaves the Nightmare King’s glowering visage mere inches from his face. Instead, he folds his arms across his chest and raises his chin defiantly. “Right here.”

Pitch intensifies his glare, but it’s no fun blustering at people who refuse to be scared. In the back of his mind, he wonders how many mortals he’s met in his long, long existence who are actually unafraid in his presence. He’s certain he could count them on one hand. It never ends well for them, though; fearlessness invariably makes them overconfident, leads them to make idiotic mistakes that any amateur sorcerer could have foreseen. “I see no child.”

“Young adult, then.” A faint blush colours the boy’s round cheeks at this, and Pitch notices, for the first time, that they are dotted with positively thousands of tiny freckles. He draws back, straightening up to brush the ceiling with the collar of his cloak. It’s only then, once he’s put some distance between himself and the boy, that he realizes that the boy is talking about himself.

The laugh that that notion provides is well worth coming to the mortal realm for. (Although a tiny little part of Pitch, somewhere in the back of his mind, has sat up and taken notice, and begun to calculate the possibilities that such an offer presents, innumerable as the freckles that dot the boy’s rosy cheeks.)

The boy does not join in the laughter, his frown only growing deeper. “I’m not joking,” he says, when Pitch has all but spent himself in mirth. “I wish you, the Nightmare King, would take me away.”

It’s not his true name, and the brat has mangled the elegant phrasing almost beyond recognition, but Pitch still feels those dratted Words tug uncomfortably at the most ancient strands of his magic. He swallows a curse. The boy is still young enough. Pitch is bound to obey.

But that doesn’t mean he has to make it easy.

Stalking a slow circle around the boy, Pitch sizes up his prey. The boy stands his ground, despite the way his hands shake and the greedy hands of the fearlings reaching for him, and Pitch is impressed despite himself. Of the handful who have summoned him in the past few centuries, some have been cowardly, some have been recklessly fearless, but none has possessed this kind of quiet, self-assured bravery.

“Is that what you want?” he asks softly, almost kindly, speaking into the boy’s ear from behind. From his vantage point, Pitch gets a perfect view of the delicious shiver that runs down the boy’s spine, but also notes the way the boy’s hands ball into fists. “To be taken away from here, away to my castle beyond the Nightmare City and kept there forever and ever and turned into a fearling?” Pitch sees the boy actually shudder at that, and the thought is suddenly oh, so tempting, though something in him rankles at the idea of this bright brave boy joining the greedy, grasping, brainless ranks of shadows around him.

Oh, but perhaps Pitch could keep him, could turn every strand of his golden hair to ebony, make every constellation of freckles into a cluster of black holes. Form a prince royal, born to darkness and to fear, from the sun-blessed specimen before him. As soon as the thought crosses his mind, Pitch knows that this is what he wants – this is all he wants. And Pitch Black, King of Nightmares, is not easily denied.

In strange synchronicity, the boy chooses that moment to nod. “Yes,” he says, and his voice is clear and sweet as a bell, with just the faintest edge of longing.

Pitch reaches out, strokes a hand through the boy’s wild hair before taking him by the shoulder and spinning him round to face the Nightmare King. He makes certain to put on his best fangs when he smiles. “Are you sure?”

The boy swallows, hard, the fear dancing in his eyes a lovely counterpoint to the bobbing motion in his throat. For a moment, something dark and sad flickers across his sweet features, before he scowls in determination. “That – that’s all I want.”

Pitch can’t contain a laugh. Games are all very well, but he loves it when things go his way.

The boy is afraid, it’s plain on his face and the sweetness of it fills the air around him, but his jaw is set and his gaze is steady and unblinking, meeting Pitch’s head-on. The boy licks his lips nervously, and Pitch finds himself staring, watching the small pink tongue and wondering if those lips are as soft as they look. But then, the boy has just made such a pleasant offering of himself; why shouldn’t Pitch have a taste?

Of course, there are the formalities to be observed, first and foremost among them the standard thirteen-hour grace period, should any champion care to step up and offer to face the Nightmare King’s trials to save the child. But somehow, looking at the boy and remembering that flicker of traitorous emotion, Pitch has the feeling that it is already too late.

“What is your name?” he asks the boy, who hesitates a moment, biting his lower lip. Clever child; Pitch has seen so few in the past century who are mindful enough of the power of names among the fey and their kin. But as the boy is gladly and willfully placing himself in Pitch’s power anyway, it isn’t long before he answers.

“Sandy.” No last name, no full name, is offered, none asked for. The two syllables have the ring of a true name, one that encircles everything the boy is and everything the boy may be.

“Sandy,” Pitch repeats, tasting it on his tongue like some rare fruit. “Thank you for your name, Sandy. I’ll take good care of it for you. After all, you won’t be needing it anymore.”

He wraps dark wings around them both, and an instant later, all that is left in the small room is a handful of whispering shadows.


	2. Chapter 2

Once, when Sandy was very small, before the split was even a glimmer of a notion, his parents had taken him out to the country, to his grandparents’ farm. It’s still one of his most treasured memories. They’d all been on their best behaviour, and Sandy had learned how to milk a cow and gotten a ride in a combine. He had loved every second of the visit – except for one thing.

His parents had had a ‘disagreement’. They never fought, but they would have ‘disagreements’ from time to time, making up for the fact that they never raised their voices with words chosen for their cutting edge. Sandy had slipped out of the house, anxious to get away from the tension in the air, and gone for a walk in the windbreak that protected the little farmhouse from the wind.

The tangled patch of trees was long, and deeper than it looked, and Sandy still doesn’t know how far he went or how long he spent clambering through the tamest underbrush he’s ever encountered, poking at twigs and fallen pinecones and following butterflies on rambles through the trees. What he does know, though, what is burnt into his memory like a brand, is the moment he looked up and saw the house.

He knows now that it was an abandoned shed, nothing more and nothing less, left to fall in on itself like so many old wooden sheds on small family farms. But to Sandy, then, it was a haven, a forgotten cabin in the woods, just the right size for a small boy looking to get lost and not be found. With the late-September light streaming rich and fat and golden through the trees behind it, catching on dust and bugs in the air and making them sparkle like fairy dust, the little heap of weathered gray boards was nothing short of magical.

Sandy had wasted no time in hurrying to it, pausing at the threshold for just long enough to make certain no bears or witches lurked beyond its gaping door, and slipping inside. For a few short seconds, all he had been was enchanted, watching the beams of light that streamed in through the cracks in the walls and the roof and turned his hideaway into a golden dreamland.

And then he’d taken a step forward, and the floor had creaked alarmingly and then _risen up_ like a living thing and thrown him flat on his face.

Now, Sandy knows that the floor had done no such thing. The shed was practically ancient; every board in it was weak and rotten. He’d only had to step in the wrong place and his foot had gone right through a board, tripping him and forcing the other end to obey the laws of leverage, rising into the air and giving him a good hard thwack in the back of the head. But to his small self, already half-convinced that he had stepped into a world unlike his own, the cottage was giving him a warning.

The sudden scurrying of small feet under the floorboards, rather than his crashing fall having disturbed a nest of rodents who’d made the falling-down structure their home, must have been some dread creature come to carry him off and eat him up. He’d got to his feet and made to run, but the instant he took a step the floor had wobbled dangerously and sent out a _shriek_ that made him shriek in return.

They’d found him later, much later, when the sun had gone from setting to set, its glowing golden beams rising slowly out of Sandy’s reach as he sat huddled in place, too scared to stay but too scared to move. It had taken some careful maneuvering to get him out without his falling through the rotten floorboards, and his grandmother had remarked that he was incredibly lucky he’d gotten as far as he had and only got a goose-egg on the back of his head and a bit of a cut on his ankle to show for his misadventure.

Sandy had known he wasn’t merely lucky.

That was the day he’d started to believe in his mother’s stories about the Nightmare King. His father, of course, had shaken his head at that and carefully explained what had really happened, and why Sandy should never, _ever_ go near old buildings like that again, but of course Sandy had learned his lesson, hadn’t he?

Sandy hadn’t answered. He’d been too busy thinking about the way the rising shadows had swallowed him whole.

 Wrapped in the black wings of the Nightmare King, impossible winds howling just on the edge of hearing, Sandy can’t help but think that, once again, he’s blithely wandered in over his head.

His heart beats against his chest as though trying to fly free of the little cage of his ribs. He shuts his eyes (not that it makes any difference in the all-consuming darkness) and tries to take deep, steadying breaths. This is what he wanted. This is what he chose. Of course, he hadn’t _really_ thought it would work, half-believing in the way of those who scoff at the idea of ghosts until their hands are on the ouija board.

And this is _real_. This is _real_ , almost _too_ real, and _really happening_ , and his deep, steady breaths quicken their pace until they almost match time with his rabbit heart. A little above his ear, the Nightmare King chuckles dark and wicked and _oh ye gods and little fishes_ he is actually pressed up against the _Nightmare King_ this is _actually happening –_

 _I’m going to faint,_ Sandy thinks, with remarkable clarity, and proceeds to do exactly that.

…

When he wakes, it’s to the unnerving sight of a wall of smothering darkness and the unblinking gaze of countless watchful, lamplike golden eyes.

Sandy shouts and tries to jump up, but gets tangled up in the sheets tucked neatly around him (black, of course, like everything else he can see) and falls back against the softness of the mattress behind him, pulling the sheets up to his eyes and trying not to look too much like prey. The Nightmare King’s fearling army, according to the stories, are not particularly bright, but they _can_ smell fear and won’t hesitate to devour the source.

And thinking of the stories, Sandy hazards a glance away from the eerie eyes for just long enough to confirm that yes, he is still pink and plump and freckled, not skeletal and black and starving for the nightmares of small children. He should be relieved, he knows – becoming a fearling himself was the least appealing part of the plan – but all he feels is puzzled, and a little nervous. This isn’t how the stories go. He is already off the map and into the deep dark woods, and he’s only just got here.

The eyes surrounding him all blink out, not quite in unison but close enough to make the transition sudden. Sandy’s sure, somehow, that they’re gone, that without their sight they have dispersed back into the shadows. He’s not sure if the thought is reassuring or not.

He lowers the sheets he’s clutching just enough to survey the room he’s found himself in. It’s small, but the ceiling is vaulted, arching so high above his head that the very tip of it is lost in shadow. Or perhaps that’s just because this is the castle beyond the Nightmare City, where shadows are like dust; they gather on everything and you can never quite get them off.

The stone that makes up the walls and peeks out from under the black bearskin on the floor is silvery, rather like the Nightmare King’s skin (an avenue of thought that Sandy steers away from as quickly as he possibly can). The furnishings are few, only the bed with the empty frame for a canopy, an elaborately-carved wardrobe that Sandy is almost _certain_ moves whenever he’s not looking at it, and a low table by the bed, all turned elegantly out of some nameless black wood and held together with silver fastenings.  

The door is much the same, but Sandy only gets a moment to look at it before it swings wide. The Nightmare King enters in a billow of dark, and Sandy get the feeling that the only reason he’s used the door at all is to impress Sandy. Which is a silly thought – who would want to impress _Sandy_ , anyway? – and one he quickly pushes aside in favour of other, more important ones. Like the fact that Sandy is not yet a fearling, and the fact that the Nightmare King looks far, far too pleased with himself. His quicksilver eyes ( _but hadn’t they been golden before?_ ) rake up and down Sandy’s body, sending a curious shiver down Sandy’s spine. It isn’t all fear, but there is more than a little fear there, and Sandy pulls the sheets a little closer, wishing he had something more substantial to put between him and the Nightmare King.

“The princeling wakes,” the Nightmare King purrs, and Sandy tucks himself up into a ball, hugging his knees.

“The what?”

A smile is all the answer he gets in response, a smile and a hand curled in his hair, forcing his head back. The surprised noise that escapes Sandy is just on this side of audible, but the Nightmare King’s smile grows wider at the sound nonetheless. And Sandy sees that smile above him, because somehow in the skin of a second the Nightmare King has crossed the room and is towering over him, looking down at Sandy in a way that makes him feel much as he does in those dreams when he arrives late for a test and finds he’s forgotten his pants. In a word, he feels _exposed_ , stripped and bared like a virgin offering to a pagan god, and it isn’t just the painful angle of his neck that makes his breath catch in his throat.

The Nightmare King hums deep and thoughtfully, letting go of Sandy’s hair and brushing his fingers along the soft curve of Sandy’s jaw before releasing him. It takes Sandy a moment to catch his breath.

“You have no idea how patient I have been,” the Nightmare King sighs, and Sandy wonders if he wants to know what, exactly, his captor has been waiting for. “You’ve slept away nearly half of your thirteen hours. Only seven remain for you to change your mind.” For the first time, the total assurance in his voice gives way to something that sounds curious, and he looks away from Sandy pointedly, as though unconcerned.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Sandy says, in answer to the question he hasn’t actually been asked. The Nightmare King turns back to face him, and his smile, once again, is fierce and predatory.

“No, you aren’t,” he agrees.

Sandy swallows, and looks down at his hands, slowly uncurling his fingers from their death grip on the sheets. “What happens now?” he asks, looking back up at the Nightmare King. And perhaps he’s being ridiculous, perhaps he’s being foolish, but he can’t help a little thrill of anticipation. The woods are so very dark and so very deep, and Sandy has always loved to get lost.

“Now,” the Nightmare King says, and there’s a quirk to his smile when he leans forward, pressing long fingers under Sandy’s jaw and into the soft place just below Sandy’s ear, gently tilting Sandy’s head back until they are eye to eye and Sandy cannot look away. “I’ve taken you away. You’re staying, forever and ever. It seems that there is only one requirement left to fulfill.” His teeth are very sharp and his eyes are very bright and the pads of his fingers are very, very warm against Sandy’s skin.

 _Wait_! Sandy wants to scream. _I’ve changed my mind_ but he hasn’t, has he, he hasn’t changed his mind at all. Here is where he wants to be, here with the Nightmare King, and yet it seems so unfair that it will be over so soon, that he will be changed abruptly back to one easily-forgotten face among millions.

And then the Nightmare King frowns.

His fingers dig in hard enough to hurt, and a faint hiss escapes through his clenched teeth when whatever he’s waiting for continues to not happen. Sandy watches carefully, hardly daring to draw a breath in case it shatters something, a spark of something a little like hope flickering bright and burning in his chest.

The King of Nightmares mutters something under his breath in a language like none Sandy has ever heard before, and the temperature in the room plummets even as the shadows grow thicker. Phantom hands slide over every inch of Sandy’s exposed skin, and he jumps at the contact, gooseflesh rising all along his arms. His still very plump, very pink, very _human_ arms.

“What?” the Nightmare King growls, and the spark of something that is kin to hope but far more warlike, flickering in Sandy’s chest, kindles to a flame. “Why won’t you -”

Sandy’s head feels oddly light, but his voice is clear and unshaken when he says, “You have no power over me.”

The Nightmare King draws back as though burned.

“You wished yourself to me,” he says, his voice low and menacing. The walls of the small room are invisible now, swallowed by darkness. “You gave me your _name_. What more power could I need?”

Sandy isn’t sure how he knows. But he does know. “You haven’t got my heart.”

“Give it to me.” It isn’t a request.

Sandy shakes his head, feeling as though he’s about to drift upwards and away. His heart is pounding again, a little bird struggling to break free. “It’s not that simple,” he says, and knows the words to be true even as they cross his lips. “You’ll have to win it, first.”

In an instant, the Nightmare King’s dangerous rage tempers, his snarl twisting upward into a smile. “You wish to challenge me.”

 _Is_ that what Sandy wants?

He nods, and hopes he’s made the right decision.

The Nightmare King nods in mocking repetition. “Many have tried to challenge me, in the past,” he says, almost conversationally. “All have failed. I don’t like to lose.”

 _And I’m sure you don’t play fair_ , Sandy thinks, and wonders why his mouth has gone so dry.

“But fine. A challenge, then. We’ll take the standard thirteen hours to play, of course. And when I win…” He leans in close, speaking directly into Sandy’s ear. “I may do as I please with you.”

Sandy doesn’t move. It takes a surprising amount of willpower not to.

“And if I win?”

The Nightmare King draws back at Sandy’s words, and there is genuine puzzlement on his face. Sandy squares his shoulders, and repeats himself. “If I win the game. If _I_ capture _your_ heart. What is my prize?”

He tries not to trace the curve of the King of Nightmares’ neck with his eyes when the dark being throws his head back and laughs. Tries, and fails.

“You won’t,” the Nightmare King promises, when the laughter has spun itself out. The fearlings echo it around the room, and it makes an uneasy counterpoint to their conversation. “Assuming you can _find_ it, that is.”

“But if I do.” Sandy can’t deny that a thread of excitement has found its way into his voice. “It’s no game if there isn’t a chance you’ll lose, is it? If there isn’t a way for me to win? So, if I do, what is my prize?”

“You win your freedom,” he begins, the words dull, rehearsed, as though they’ve been spoken so often that the meaning has worn right out of them. “Safe passage back Aboveground, and -”

“No.” Sandy bites his bottom lip when the Nightmare King whirls, his eyes flashing dangerous as a drawn blade under moonlight. “I don’t want that. I don’t want to go back.”

Whatever the Nightmare King had been about to say, he bites back, giving Sandy a long and considering look instead. Finally, he says, “If you somehow, miraculously, manage to succeed, I will make you royalty in this land. Not a prince. A king in your own right.”

Sandy tries to swallow, finds he can’t, licks his lips and feels he only makes them drier. “I’d  - I’d be the Nightmare King?”

There is not so much as a hint of mirth or mocking in the Nightmare King’s demeanour when he says, “If you wished the title, it would be yours.”

“That’s…” He swallows again, manages to meet the Nightmare King’s eyes. “That sounds fair.”

Just like that, the seriousness that had filled the Nightmare King’s voice is joined by a faint tinge of mockery. “Oh, you poor deluded child. What gave you the idea that anything about this was going to be fair?”

He leans forward, and presses the ghost of a kiss to Sandy’s lips, before disappearing, laughing, into the dark.

 

Sandy doesn’t move for a very long moment, still feeling the echo of lips pressed against his. He wants to decide what to do, wants to make a plan of action, wants to _think_ , but his thoughts keep circling back around to the kiss that the Nightmare King gave him. He doesn’t know what to think of it, doesn’t know how to react, and finally has to physically brush a hand across his lips to erase the phantom feeling so that he can get his head back on straight. He’s just challenged a powerful and immortal being to win his heart. He should have known there’d be kisses involved, sooner or later.

The thought brings a flush to his cheeks, and heat climbs up the back of his neck as he suddenly realizes he doesn’t know what _else_ to expect. Will the Nightmare King continue as he has, with soft touches and harsh words, acting like a lover but without anything resembling love?

 _Then he’s going to lose_ , Sandy thinks fiercely, and tries not to remember the look in those indescribable eyes.

It’s unlikely, though, Sandy thinks to himself, quashing the few stray thoughts that have wandered down all the avenues of what ‘acting like a lover’ could possibly mean. Far more likely, from what he’s seen and the stories he knows, is that the Nightmare King will take his challenge literally, and try to physically steal Sandy’s heart. He’ll have to be on his guard, if he wants to keep it.

That thought make Sandy pause. Of _course_ he wants to keep his heart. He has no desire to lose, no desire to become the Nightmare King’s pawn or plaything. He wants to be here, but that doesn’t mean he intends to surrender himself completely. And if he _can_ win this game, if he can somehow come out of this as something more than just a voiceless and invisible nobody…

Sandy shakes his head, and, gathering his composure, slips out of the bed. The bearskin feels rough and shaggy and slightly greasy underfoot, the chill of the stones below seeping up through the heavy pelt. Sandy shivers a little, without thinking, and hugs his arms against the insidious cold.

He’s relieved to find he’s still fully dressed, his too-long tan slacks rolled over twice at the bottom in anticipation of hemming, his cheerful yellow-and-white striped t-shirt looking garish and noisy against the elegant dark of the room. He has no shoes, and frowns at his own lack of foresight in calling up a mythical being to take him away without so much as slipping into a pair of sneakers. But what’s done is done, and Sandy sighs, before pulling off his worn white socks, balling them up and slipping them into his pocket. They won’t offer much protection anyway, and if he can’t have shoes he might as well be barefoot.

The shock of the cold floor, even though he was expecting it, turns his mind from thoughts of socks and shoes. Sandy peers around the door, and sees a staircase, winding down, down into darkness. He’s in a tower. How appropriate.

What had the Nightmare King said? _“Assuming you can_ find _it…”_

Sandy straightens his back, squares his shoulders, and strides confidently out to search out the heart of the Nightmare King.


	3. Chapter 3

Twelve hours, two oubliettes, countless riddles, one dreamlike waltz, four surprisingly helpful fearlings, one assassination attempt, and forty-seven minutes later, Sandy has still not found it.

He can’t give up now, though. He’s come so close, he’s learned so much, he’s seen glimpses of the man who is the Nightmare King, beyond the bluster and the mystery. He’s _so close._

He’s not sure where he is.

One minute, he was hurrying up the stairs to the tallest tower of the castle beyond the Nightmare City for a final, dramatic confrontation with the Nightmare King; the next, the steps had given way under his feet with a feeling treacherously like rotten wood and he’d fallen, down through the dark. When he landed, it wasn’t quite like falling into the oubliettes; he hadn’t crashed into a hard and rocky floor, hadn’t heard any taunting fearling laughter from the darkness around him or during his fall. It’s just him and the dark here.

And, suddenly, a shaft of sparkling golden light.

Sandy reaches out for it automatically, before realizing it might be a trap, and snatching his hand back. The beam does nothing threatening, though, but only rises slowly until it’s above his reach. A second and then a third join it, and then another and another until Sandy is no longer staring into formless blackness but instead bathed in golden light, which beams through the cracks of an old wooden wall.

A sudden fearful certainty grips him, and he looks down at himself. But instead of the child he’s half-expecting to see, he sees the body he’s used to: seventeen, past all hope of growing out of his ‘baby fat’, past all hope of adding so much as another inch to his height. Not the Sandy who wandered into an abandoned building and promptly learned the value of fear. Then this can’t be quite a memory.

He turns to face the door, and the floor is gone. A few broken boards jut out over the vast, black abyss between him and the door. In the depths of that abyss, something moves, something huge and old and slow, claws scraping against stone.

For one dizzying moment, Sandy isn’t sure if he’s awake or dreaming. He thinks at first of the arrow in his back, the nightmares it had brought on, but he quickly dismisses the thought. Those had been hallucinations, constructed from utter fantasy, had had as much substance as candyfloss and spiderwebs. This is substantial. This is solid. This is not a moment from his past, not as it really was, but it _is_ exactly as he remembers it. And in that, it is more visceral, more _real_ , than any vision the Nightmare King could taunt him with.

Sandy doesn’t wonder what’s happening, doesn’t ask how this could be. He knows all too well where he keeps this particular memory. Instead, he looks around for the Nightmare King.

He turns a full circle before he notices the faintest of ripples in the darkness at his feet. Sandy backs away from the edge of the floor, watching in awe as the Nightmare King rises from the void, stony and silent, as though carved from onyx.

Sandy takes another step backward, into the meager protection of the fading sunlight.

The figure before him is magnificent, dressed to impress, towering over Sandy without bending the ramrod of his back. His finery is as unearthly as he is, the sweep of his impossibly high collar accentuating the curve of his throat and the slice of his cheekbones, the cut of his fantastical coat highlighting every line of his sleek and slender form. Even with the jagged edges – _especially_ with the jagged edges – he looks both regal and wild, impossible to contain in a space this small. And across his brow sits a glittering, antlered black crown that for all its delicacy still somehow seems, to Sandy at least, to look unbearably heavy.

This is not the man Sandy has cursed countless times in the last twelve-odd hours. This is not the man that Sandy has found himself growing rather fond of, despite himself, despite everything. This is not a man at all. This is the myth whose presence has always loomed large in Sandy’s imagination. This is the King of Nightmares whose shadows once swallowed Sandy whole. And here, in the clutches of a memory that he holds closest to his heart, Sandy knows with quiet dread that he will, once again, be devoured.

The Nightmare King’s eyes blink open, twin stars in the darkness around him, and gazes around at the memory. When his eyes fix upon Sandy, he gives a visible start, and takes one fluid, elegant step forward, dragging skittering shadows behind him and onto the floorboards like the hem of his cloak.

Sandy stands stock-still, refusing to give any more ground to the immortal before him.

The Nightmare King speaks, and his voice is like words etched in stone, a solemn command that it would be unthinkable to disobey. “Your time is up.”

Sandy tries to speak, stops himself, tries again and feels his throat close. He takes a deep breath, looking away from those hypnotic eyes for just long enough to find his resolve. The shadows that attend the King, Sandy notices, have begun to sneak towards his bare toes, but recoil every time they encounter one of the dusty golden sunbeams.

Emboldened, Sandy looks back up, biting his lower lip when his nerve falters. “No, it’s not. I’ve got ten more minutes.”

The side of the Nightmare King’s mouth twitches upwards, just slightly, and the shadows echo with sardonic laughter. “And what do you intend to do with that?” He takes another step forward, inexorable as the hands of time, and shadow rises around Sandy, who balls his hands into fists with the effort of not retreating. “We are here in the most secret, fondest recollection – and deepest wish – of your heart.” For a moment, it almost seems as though he’s surprised, before his granite face splits into a jagged, toothy grin. “I think that means I have won your little game, _Sandy_.”

Sandy doesn’t break his gaze, tries not to flinch at the sound of his name. The sunbeams are retreating, rising quickly out of reach, and he wills them back down. This is _his_ memory, after all. _His_ heart. Out there might be all the Kingdom of Shadows, the Nightmare King’s domain, but this is Sandy’s own ground.

And just like that, Sandy knows what to do.

The sunbeams halt their slow ascent when the first words cross his lips. “Through dangers untold…”

The Nightmare King freezes in place. “What are you doing?” he demands. Sandy fixes him with his best determined glare, and continues.

“And hardships unnumbered…”

“Stop it!” There’s a note of unease in the Nightmare King’s voice now, and Sandy notices the way his shadows draw together against the now-encroaching sunbeams.

“I have fought my way here, to the castle beyond the Nightmare City- ”

“Stop this at _once_.” The Nightmare King reaches out as though to shake Sandy, but stops before he is even within reach. “I _won_! You can’t -”

“For my will is as strong as yours,” Sandy recites, over the Nightmare King’s tirade, cutting it abruptly short. He thinks again of the arrow and its strange poison, of the dance he thinks perhaps they had shared, or perhaps he had only dreamed. He’s not sure that it makes any difference here, where dream and reality are one and the same.

There was never any chance of his failing, he thinks, watching the shadows retreat. The Nightmare King has not understood, has never understood. Here where the metaphorical is literal, he had tried to capture Sandy’s heart with blades and in traps.  And he doesn’t even realise what he’s doing wrong.

“And my kingdom as great.”

The clustered shadows are blown back as the back wall of what now only resembles a falling-down structure in the most dreamlike of ways falls in, flooding what remains of the room with shimmering golden light. A few dark shapes scurry, hissing, into the shelter of their stricken master’s robes.

The Nightmare King himself stands paralyzed, staring at Sandy as though looking upon some idol, some prophet, someone or something more than a pudgy little human. Sandy risks a glance downward, only to see himself sparkling, wreathed in light like a young sun.

“Sandy,” the Nightmare King says, and for all its seductive entreaty, his voice has an edge of panic to it. “Think what I can give you – what power, what freedom! I would make you a _king_. You would rule by my side, and you would never be lonely again.”

Sandy pauses, and that seems to be all the encouragement the Nightmare King needs. “All you have to do is surrender to me, Sandy. Just fear me, love me, do as I say -”

“No.”

It’s only one simple word, but it carries immeasurable weight, and it strikes like the toll of the hour. In fact, Sandy fancies he can hear a bell, chiming out the hour. If he were to count its chimes, he knows that they would add up to thirteen.

The Nightmare King draws himself up when Sandy takes a step forward, pulling back out of reach even as he tries to make himself more intimidating. It doesn’t seem to matter. Somehow, without having changed at all, he has grown small enough for Sandy to reach up and cup his cheek with one glowing hand.

Sandy can’t keep the faintest trace of regret from his voice when he says, “You have no power over me.”

The final stroke of the clock fades, taking the last remnants of the room with it.

The Nightmare King sighs, and takes Sandy’s hand in both of his own, carefully lifting it away from his face. His hands are warm and large, big enough to cover Sandy’s completely.

“I _would_ have made you a king, you know,” he says, and when he meets Sandy’s eyes at last there is no hint of the consuming, superior look they had held. Instead, his gaze holds something that Sandy thinks is almost a cousin to awe.

“I know,” Sandy answers. And he _does_ know, somehow, is as certain of the Nightmare King’s sincerity as he is that he doesn’t need such borrowed power. He is already brilliant in his own right.

The Nightmare King nods, once, as if he too understands. “You’re free to go if you wish,” he says, turning his face away from Sandy haughtily. The disdain on his face is belied, however, by the fact that he does not let go of Sandy’s hand. Sandy nods, knowing the truth of those words as well. The Nightmare King could not hold him against his will, now, even if he were foolish enough to try.

“But I don’t wish to go,” Sandy replies, and the Nightmare King laughs. It’s a harsh bark of sound, with none of the elegance or vague sense of menace that Sandy has come to expect.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting your prize, then,” he says, and the mocking edge has returned to his voice, bitter and biting. He snatches his hands away from Sandy’s as though burned, takes the heavy crown from his head in one swift movement and hold it out without once meeting Sandy’s eyes.

Sandy looks at the crown for a moment, its sharp, jagged edges and the impossible gravity of its delicate thorns and spikes. He bites his lower lip and then, gently, places his hands over the Nightmare King’s and pushes the crown back towards its owner. Tiny spirals of gold swirl over and across its glittering surface where the very tips of Sandy’s fingers brush against it, picking out details and designs he hadn’t seen before.

One looks suspiciously like a stylized heart.

The Nightmare King’s head snaps up, and he looks in disbelief from Sandy to the crown and back again.

“It looks awfully heavy,” Sandy says carefully. “And far too big for me.”

Just as carefully, he pulls his hands away, lingering perhaps a little longer than is strictly necessary. The Nightmare King’s stare is as uncomprehending as it is challenging, and Sandy smiles into the teeth of it. “I’m no Nightmare King. I think I’d make a total mess of it if I tried. But it’s what you do. It’s who you _are_. I wouldn’t take that from you.”

The Nightmare King says nothing, only turns a venomous glare on the crown, now filigreed with gold. Sandy’s smile falters, and he is just beginning to wonder how to apologise when the Nightmare King turns that glare on him.

“What, then?” he demands. “You think you can just bring your light into the Kingdom of Shadows? That you can simply take my domain for your own?”

Sandy shakes his head frantically. “No, I didn’t -”

“Then _what_ do you want?” The Nightmare King gathers himself up again, a sneer twisting his regal features. “You are the only light to have come into my realm of darkness in as long as I can remember.” And if his voice threatens to break, he shows no sign of it on his face. “Do you intend to simply snatch that away again?” His voice rises almost to a shout. “ _Why did you wish yourself here?_ ”

Sandy looks at his feet. A stray sunbeam skitters across the surface of the abyss, before scurrying back to join its comrades.

“You were always there for me,” he says, and wonders if his voice will be loud enough to hear from the Nightmare King’s lofty height. It seems as though it must be, for the silence suddenly seems less dangerous and more curious. “Even when I had nothing else, I always had you. There were always the Land of Shadows and the Nightmare City to retreat to, always the Nightmare King and his fearlings to greet me, and I -” He swallows around the sudden, painful lump in his throat. “I guess I thought it had to be better.”

The silence rules unchallenged.

“And it is,” Sandy continues, looking up with his heart in his throat. “It’s – it’s better than I ever dreamed. _You’re -_ ” He bites back the rest of the sentence. “I won’t be your subject. I don’t want to be your master.”

A derisive snort is all the answer he gets in return.

Sandy blows out an exasperated breath, brushing his unruly bangs out of his eyes. How much clearer can he make this?

“And I don’t think you’ve lost,” he says, at last.

He doesn’t get an answer for far too long, hardly dares to look up. When he does, though, the Nightmare King is simply staring, without venom or vitriol or any emotion that Sandy recognizes on that long, elegant face. It takes him too long to recognize it as hope.

Sandy spreads his arms wide, is distracted for a moment by the way the sunbeams arch playfully around and out from his hands. “You’ve had my heart since before you even knew I existed.”

The Nightmare King appears to have been struck speechless.  He looks down to the crown again, and up at the sunbeams that gild the darkness before him, anywhere but Sandy’s face. “I believe my prize was to be -”

“Me.” Sandy’s mouth is dry, fear and just a little excitement colouring his voice as he finishes the sentence. “To do with as you please.”

The smile that finally breaks across the Nightmare King’s face, when he meets Sandy’s gaze, is as slow as nightfall, and as dark. It grows wider, toothy as that of a shark that has scented prey, when Sandy only nods, and he takes a single gliding step forward. Sandy raises one hand, and somehow, despite all his power, this is enough to stay the Nightmare King in his tracks.

“Wait. You’ve got an end of the bargain to hold up, too.”

“Oh, yes.” The Nightmare King licks his lips, his tongue narrow and pointed and surprisingly long, and Sandy feels heat rising to fill his face. “But it seems that you have already made yourself a king, and in my domain, no less.” He smirks to himself, and through some sleight of hand or shadow trick the crown vanishes, leaving his hands free to brush along Sandy’s jaw, skim down the back of Sandy’s hand. “All that remains is -” He bites off the rest of the sentence.

Sandy twines his fingers through the Nightmare King’s, and feels a smile curl unbidden across his lips. “To be by your side?”

The smile he gets in return is equally hesitant, but equally sincere.

“Pitch Black.”

“What?”

The Nightmare King squeezes Sandy’s hand hard enough to hurt. “I know your true name. It’s only fair that you know mine.”

“And here I thought nothing about this was going to be fair,” Sandy says.

The  Nightmare King – Pitch – shuts Sandy’s mouth quite effectively with a kiss.

…

In all the stories that are told of the Nightmare King, there are a very few that tell also of the Lord of Dreams, the bright and (usually) benevolent counterpart to his most fearsome majesty. Of those very few, fewer still hold even a kernel of truth.

Sandy loves them all anyway.


End file.
